Producers gets first rice load in Pine Bluff

Wednesday

Jul 25, 2012 at 2:50 PMJul 25, 2012 at 2:56 PM

Producers Rice Mill, Inc. received its first load of rice for the 2012 season Monday. The load came in at the Pine Bluff facility, but Producers President and CEO Keith Glover said he expects the Stuttgart facility to see its first load by the end of the week.

Leigh Kreimeier

Producers Rice Mill, Inc. received its first load of rice for the 2012 season Monday. The load came in at the Pine Bluff facility, but Producers President and CEO Keith Glover said he expects the Stuttgart facility to see its first load by the end of the week.

"If not the tail end of this week, then next week for sure," Glover said.

The first trailer load in Pine Bluff was from Steve Pharr. The variety was RiceTec XL745, grade 1, with 18.9 percent moisture. This is the earliest first load of a new crop year received in the history of Producers Rice Mill.

Industry specialists were predicting an early harvest, after 80 percent of the crop was planted in late March and early April. But with an early harvest comes questions about quality.

"The Pine Bluff load looked good," Glover said. "From the road it looks like a nice crop out there, and we are not seeing the stink bug problems. 2010 was the worst stink bug damage we received on record."

Glover said he feels the harvest will hit at the same time for all farmers. Not like the 2011 harvest. "It will come off all together," he said. "We are pretty optimistic it looks like we have a good quality crop in the field."

But with the rush of harvest comes the question that most farmers want answered. Will the new Dryer No. 6 — that is currently under construction — be ready in time for harvest?

"It should be up and going by Aug. 16, if we can get it online any sooner we will," Glover said. "When it comes online I think we will be in the blunt of harvest."

This improvement will bring an extra 3.5 million bushel storage space.

"In recent years we have unloaded anywhere from 13 to 16 million bushels of rice during harvest and with the facilities we have prior to this improvement it was a struggle to handle that much rice," he explained.

Producers Rice Mill has 10 drying and receiving locations throughout eastern Arkansas, one at Cleveland, Miss., and one at Greenville, Miss.